Chinua Achebe the African Writer and English

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The African Writer and the English LanguageChinua Achebe

I N JUNE 1962, there was a writers' gathering at Makerere, impressively styled: "A Conference of African Writers of English Expression." Despite this sonorous and rather solemn title, it turned out

to be a very lively affair and a very exciting and useful experience for many of us. But there wassomething which we tried to do and failed that was to define "African literature" satisfactorily.

Was it literature produced in Africa or about Africa? Could African literature be on any subject, or must it have an African theme? Should it embrace the whole continent or south of the Sahara, or

just black Africa? And then the question of language. Should it be in indigenous African languagesor should it include Arabic, English, French, Portuguese, Afrikaans, and so on?

In the end we gave up trying to find an answer, partly I should admit on my own instigation.Perhaps we should not have given up so easily. It seems to me from some of the things have sinceheard and read that we may have given the impression of not knowing what we were doing, or

worse, not daring to look too closely at it.

A Nigerian critic, Obi Wali, writing in Transition 10 said: "Perhaps the most importantachievement of the conference ... is that African literature as now defined and understood leadsnowhere."

I am sure that Obi Wali must have felt triumphantly vindicated when he saw the report of adifferent kind of conference held later at Fourah Bay to discuss African literature and theuniversity curriculum. This conference produced a tentative definition of African literature asfollows: "Creative writing in which an African setting is authentically handled or to whichexperiences originating in Africa are integral." We are told specifically that Conrad's Heart of

Darkness qualifies as African literature while Graham Greene's Heart of the Matter fails because itcould have been set anywhere outside Africa.

A number of interesting speculations issue from this definition, which admittedly is only aninterim formulation designed to produce an indisputably desirable end, namely, to introduceAfrican students to literature set in their environment. But I could not help being amused by thecurious circumstance in which Conrad, a Pole, writing in English could produce African literaturewhile Peter Abrahams would be ineligible should he write a novel based on his experiences in theWest Indies.

What all this suggests to me is that you cannot cram African literature into a small, neat definition.I do not see African literature as one unit but as a group of associated units in fact the sum total of all the national and ethnic literatures of Africa.

A national literature is one that takes the whole nation for its province and has a realized or potential audience throughout its territory. In other words, a literature that is written in the national language. An ethnic literature is one which is available only to one ethnic group within the nation.If you take Nigeria as an example, the national literature, as I see it, is the literature written inEnglish; and the ethnic literatures are in Hausa, Ibo, Yoruba, Efik, Edo, Ijaw, etc., etc.


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Any attempt to define African literature in terms which overlook the complexities of the Africanscene at the material time is doomed to failure. After the elimination of white rule shall have beencompleted, the single most important fact in Africa in the second half of the twentieth century willappear to be the rise of individual nation-states. I believe that African literature will follow the

same pattern.What we tend to do today is to think of African literature as a newborn infant. But in fact what wehave is a whole generation of newborn infants. Of course, if you only look cursorily, one infant is

pretty much like another; but in reality each is already set on its own separate journey. Of course,you may group them together on the basis of anything you choose the color of their hair, for instance. Or you may group them together on the basis of the language they will speak or thereligion of their fathers. Those would all be valid distinctions, but they could not begin to accountfully for each individual person carrying, as it were, his own little, unique lodestar of genes.

Those who in talking about African literature want to exclude North Africa because it belongs to adifferent tradition surely do not suggest that black Africa is anything like homogeneous. Whatdoes Shabaan Robert have in common with Christopher Okigbo or Awoonor-Williams? Or Mongo Beti of Cameroun and Paris with Nzekwu of Nigeria? What does the champagne-drinkingupper-class Creole society described by Easmon of Sierra Leone have in common with the ruralfolk and fishermen of J. P. Clark's plays? Of course, some of these differences could be accountedfor on individual rather than national grounds, but a good deal of it is also environmental.

I have indicated somewhat offhandedly that the national literature of Nigeria and of many other countries of Africa is, or will be, written in English. This may sound like a controversial statement,

but it isn't. All I have done has been to look at the reality of present-day Africa. This "reality" maychange as a result of deliberate, e.g., political, action. If it does, an entirely new situation will arise,and there will be plenty of time to examine it. At present it may be more profitable to look at thescene as it is.

What are the factors which have conspired to place English in the position of national language inmany parts of Africa? Quite simply the reason is that these nations were created in the first place

by the intervention of the British, which, I hasten to add, is not saying that the peoples comprisingthese nations were invented by the British.

The country which we know as Nigeria today began not so very long ago as the arbitrary creationof the British. It is true, as William Fagg says in his excellent new book, Nigerian Images, that thisarbitrary action has proved as lucky in terms of African art history as any enterprise of thefortunate Princess of Serendip. And I believe that in political and economic terms too this arbitrarycreation called Nigeria holds out great prospects. Yet the fact remains that Nigeria was created bythe British for their own ends. Let us give the devil his due: colonialism in Africa disrupted manythings, but it did create big political units where there were small, scattered ones before. Nigeriahad hundreds of autonomous communities ranging in size from the vast Fulani Empire founded byUsman dan Fodio in the north to tiny village entities in the east. Today it is one country.

Of course there are areas of Africa where colonialism divided up a single ethnic group among twoor even three powers. But on the whole it did bring together many peoples that had hitherto gone


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their several ways. And it gave them a language with which to talk to one another. If it failed togive them a song, it at least gave them a tongue, for sighing. There are not many countries in Africatoday where you could abolish the language of the erstwhile colonial powers and still retain thefacility for mutual communication. Therefore those African writers who have chosen to write inEnglish or French are not unpatriotic smart alecks with an eye on the main chance outside their

own countries. They are by-products of the same process that made the new nation-states of Africa.

You can take this argument a stage further to include other countries of Africa. The only reasonwhy we can even talk about African unity is that when we get together, we have a manageablenumber of languages to talk in English, French, Arabic.

The other day I had a visit from Joseph Kariuki of Kenya. Although I had read some of his poemsand he had read my novels, we had not met before. But it didn't seem to matter. In fact I had methim through his poems, especially through his love poem Come Away My Love, in which hecaptures in so few words the trials and tensions of an African in love with a white girl in Britain:

Come away, my love, from streetsWhere unkind eyes divideAnd shop windows reflect our difference.

By contrast, when in 1960 I was traveling in East Africa and went to the home of the late ShabaanRobert, the Swahili poet of Tanganyika, things had been different. We spent some time talkingabout writing, but there was no real contact. I knew from all accounts that I was talking to animportant writer, but of the nature of his work I had no idea. He gave me two books of his poems,which I treasure but cannot read until I have learned Swahili.

And there are scores of languages I would want to learn if it were possible. Where am I to find thetime to learn the half dozen or so Nigerian languages, each of which can sustain a literature? I amafraid it cannot be done. These languages will just have to develop as tributaries to feed the onecentral language enjoying nationwide currency. Today, for good or ill, that language is English.Tomorrow it may be something else, although I very much doubt it.

Those of us who have inherited the English language may not be in a position to appreciate thevalue of the inheritance. Or we may go on resenting it because it came as part of a package dealwhich included many other items of doubtful value and the positive atrocity of racial arroganceand prejudice, which may yet set the world on fire. But let us not in rejecting the evil throw out thegood with it.

Some time last year I was traveling in Brazil meeting Brazilian writers and artists. A number of thewriters I spoke to were concerned about the restrictions imposed on them by their use of thePortuguese language. I remember a woman poet saying she had given serious thought to writing inFrench! And yet their problem is not half as difficult as ours. Portuguese may not have theuniversal currency of English or French but at least it is the national language of Brazil with her eighty million or so people, to say nothing of the people of Portugal, Angola, Mozambique, etc.

Of Brazilian authors, I have only read, in translation, one novel by Jorge Amado, who is not only


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Brazil's leading novelist but one of the most important writers in the world. From that one novel,Cabriella, I was able to glimpse something of the exciting Afro-Latin culture which is the pride of Brazil and is quite unlike any other culture. Jorge Amado is only one of the many writers Brazilhas produced. At their national writers' festival there were literally hundreds of them. But the work of the vast majority will be closed to the rest of the world forever, including no doubt the work of

some excellent writers. There is certainly a great advantage to writing in a world language.I think I have said enough to give an indication of my thinking on the importance of the worldlanguage which history has forced down our throats. Now let us look at some of the most serioushandicaps. And let me say straightaway that one of the most serious handicaps is not the one

people talk about most often, namely, that it is impossible for anyone ever to use a secondlanguage as effectively as his first. This assertion is compounded of half truth and half bogusmystique. Of course, it is true that the vast majority of people are happier with their first languagethan with any other. But then the majority of people are not writers. We do have enough examplesof writers who have performed the feat of writing effectively in a second language. And I am notthinking of the obvious names like Conrad. It would be more germane to our subject to chooseAfrican examples.

The first name that comes to my mind is Olauda Equiano, better known as Gustavus Vassa, theAfrican. Equiano was an Ibo, I believe from the village of Iseke in the Orlu division of Eastern

Nigeria. He was sold as a slave at a very early age and transported to America. Later he bought hisfreedom and lived in England. In 1789 he published his life story, a beautifully written documentwhich, among other things, set down for the Europe of his time something of the life and habit of his people in Africa, in an attempt to counteract the lies and slander invented by some Europeans to

justify the slave trade.

Coming nearer to our times, we may recall the attempts in the first quarter of this century by WestAfrican nationalists to come together and press for a greater say in the management of their ownaffairs. One of the most eloquent of that band was the Honorable Casely Hayford of the GoldCoast. His presidential address to the National Congress of British West Africa in 1925 wasmemorable not only for its sound common sense but as a fine example of elegant prose. Thegovernor of Nigeria at the time was compelled to take notice, and he did so in characteristic style:he called Hayford's congress "a self-selected and self-appointed congregation of educated Africangentlemen." We may derive some amusement from the fact that British colonial administratorslearned very little in the following quarter of a century. But at least they did learn in theend which is more than one can say for some others.

It is when we come to what is commonly called creative literature that most doubt seems to arise.Obi Wali, whose article "Dead End of African Literature" I referred to, has this to say:

.. . until these writers and their Western midwives accept the fact that any true African literature must bewritten in African languages, they would be merely pursuing a dead end, which can only lead to sterility,uncreativity and frustration.

But far from leading to sterility, the work of many new African writers is full of the most exciting possibilities. Take this from Christopher Okigbo's limits:


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Suddenly becoming talkativelike weaverbird

Summoned at offside of dream remembered

Between sleep and wakingI hand up my egg-shellsTo you of palm grove,Upon whose bamboo towers hangDripping with yesterupwineA tiger mask and nude spear....

Queen of the damp half light,I have had my cleansing.

Emigrant with air-borne nose,The he-goat-on-heat.

Or take the poem Night Rain, in which J. P. Clark captures so well the fear and wonder felt by achild as rain clamors on the thatch roof at night, and his mother, walking about in the dark, moves

her simple belongings

Out of the run of water That like ants filing out of the woodWill scatter and gain possessionOf the floor.

I think that the picture of water spreading on the floor "like ants filing out of the wood" is beautiful.Of course, if you have never made fire with faggots, you may miss it. But dark's inspiration derivesfrom the same source which gave birth to the saying that a man who brings home ant-riddenfaggots must be ready for the visit of lizards.

I do not see any signs of sterility anywhere here. What I do see is a new voice coming out of Africa,speaking of African experience in a worldwide language. So my answer to the question Can an

African ever learn English well enough to be able to use it effectively in creative writing? iscertainly yes. If on the other hand you ask. Can he ever learn to use it like a native speaker? Ishould say, I hope not. It is neither necessary nor desirable for him to be able to do so. The price aworld language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use. The Africanwriter should aim to use English in a way that brings out his message best without altering thelanguage to the extent that its value as a medium of international exchange will be lost. He shouldaim at fashioning an English which is at once universal and able to carry his peculiar experience. Ihave in mind here the writer who has something new, something different to say. The nondescriptwriter has little to tell us, anyway, so he might as well tell it in conventional language and get it

over with. If I may use an extravagant simile, he is like a man offering a small, nondescript routinesacrifice for which a chick, or less, will do. A serious writer must look for an animal whose bloodcan match the power of his offering.

In this respect Amos Tutola is a natural. A good instinct has turned his apparent limitation inlanguage into a weapon of great strength a half-strange dialect that serves him perfectly in theevocation of his bizarre world. His last book, and to my mind, his finest, is proof enough that onecan make even an imperfectly learned second language do amazing things. In this book, The


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Feather Woman of the Jungle, Tutola's superb storytelling is at last cast in the episodic form whichhe handles best instead of being painfully stretched on the rack of the novel.

From a natural to a conscious artist: myself, in fact. Allow me to quote a small example from Arrow of God, which may give some idea of how I approach the use of English. The Chief Priest in

the story is telling one of his sons why it is necessary to send him to church:I want one of my sons to join these people and be my eyes there. If there is nothing in it you will come back.But if there is something there you will bring home my share. The world is like a Mask, dancing. If you wantto see it well you do not stand in one place. My spirit tells me that those who do not befriend the white mantoday will be saying had we known tomorrow.

Now supposing I had put it another way. Like this, for instance:

I am sending you as my representative among these people just to be on the safe side in case the newreligion develops. One has to move with the times or else one is left behind. I have a hunch that those who failto come to terms with the white man may well regret their lack of foresight.

The material is the same. But the form of the one is in character and the other is not. It is largely amatter of instinct, but judgment comes into it too.

You read quite often nowadays of the problems of the African writer having first to think in hismother tongue and then to translate what he has thought into English. If it were such a simple,mechanical process, I would agree that it was pointless the kind of eccentric pursuit you mightexpect to see in a modern Academy of Lagado and such a process could not possibly producesome of the exciting poetry and prose which is already appearing.

One final point remains for me to make. The real question is not whether Africans could write inEnglish but whether they ought to. Is it right that a man should abandon his mother tongue for someone else's? It looks like a dreadful betrayal and produces a guilty feeling.

But, for me, there is no other choice. I have been given this language and I intend to use it. I hope,though, that there always will be men, like the late Chief Fagunwa, who will choose to write intheir native tongue and ensure that our ethnic literature will flourish side by side with the nationalones. For those of us who opt for English, there is much work ahead and much excitement.

Writing in the London Observer recently, James Baldwin said:

My quarrel with the English language has been that the language reflected none of my experience. But now I began to see the matter another way.... Perhaps the language was not my own because I had never attempted

to use it, had only learned to imitate it. If this were so, then it might be made to bear the burden of myexperience if I could find the stamina to challenge it, and me, to such a test.

I recognize, of course, that Baldwin's problem is not exactly mine, but I feel that the Englishlanguage will be able to carry the weight of my African experience. But it will have to be a newEnglish, still in full communion with its ancestral home but altered to suit its new Africansurroundings.


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Chinua Achebe the African Writer and English

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